Well, in this morning's email stack, I had a blanket email from the CEO of Speakeasy, Bruce Chatterley, informing all of its customers that Speakeasy has been acquired by BestBuy.
From the letter:
"Best Buy has agreed to acquire Speakeasy, a privately-held voice and data solutions company based in Seattle, WA. Speakeasy will be aligned under the Best Buy For Business (BBFB) unit, enhancing Best Buy's technology portfolio and ability to help small businesses improve their productivity and cut costs."
And the question I had was, why would a retailer purchase a connectivity company.
"One of Speakeasy's core product offerings is Voice over IP (VoIP), which is becoming a popular choice for small businesses who seek efficient and cost-effective telecommunications services. Best Buy For Business' mission is to deliver simple, reliable, and affordable technology solutions to small businesses. A product offering such as VoIP, which has immediate compelling appeal to most SBs based on cost savings and simplicity, is an attractive value proposition that allows Best Buy to round out its solutions menu for small businesses."
Something also makes me wonder if BestBuy will begin to partner with providers to offer hosted business-line applications like Exchange, CRM, and others. This seems like a logical next step, since you would now have BestBuy selling the equipment to the small business, Geek Squad setting up the equipment for the small business, then using GS to also set up connectivity through Speakeasy and any hosted applications that require client-side software, i.e. Outlook setup to Hosted Exchange services.
